Chairwoman of the National Assembly of Vietnam Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan arrived in Canberra on November 29, starting her official visit to Australia.

Chairwoman of the National Assembly of Vietnam Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan arrived in Canberra on November 29

The relations between Vietnam and Australia have grown rapidly and effectively in recent years, especially since the establishment of bilateral comprehensive partnership in 2009 and the signing of a declaration on enhancing Vietnam-Australia comprehensive partnership in March 2015.

Australia considers Vietnam a key partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and highly values the role of Vietnam in the bloc.

Currently, Australia is the eighth biggest trade partner of Vietnam with two-way trade growing by 10 percent each year to reach over 5 billion USD in 2016.

So far, Australia has injected 1.7 billion USD in 378 projects, ranking 19th among 115 countries and territories investing in Vietnam.

Australia is one of the largest providers of non-refundable official development assistance (ODA) for Vietnam with over 130 million AUD per year in 2010-2015.

The two countries have strong cooperation in education, labour, tourism, and science-technology.

Along with the sound relations between the two countries, the rapports between the Vietnamese and Australian parliaments are developing. The ongoing visit to Australia by NA Chairwoman Ngan is expected to promote the comprehensive partnership with Australia, towards the strategic partnership in 2018.

The visit also looks to beef up cooperative ties between Vietnam’s National Assembly and Australia’s Senate and House of Representatives as well as enhance bilateral cooperation in potential fields such as economics, trade, development cooperation, agriculture, education, science-technology, environment-natural resources, tourism, culture and people-to-people exchanges.-VNA